Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have three and a half minutes to try to explain to the Minister how people have suffered for the past 70-odd years. These survivors have lived hell on earth and I ask the Minister not to condemn them to hell in their death by not doing the right thing. "[My son] was wrenched from my breast by one of the nuns while I was feeding him and taken away for adoption." I know the woman who said that. She is a friend and hero of mine. She was forced to face a wall and they tore that child from her chest. It took 45 years, because of obstruction by Tusla and others, for her to track down her son. Her son does not even have rights today. That is what it is about. It is about doing the right thing in this Chamber.

They say that a bad law is an unjust law. This law is a disgrace, as bad as any holocaust. We must be the laughing stock of the world that we have a Government that wants to bury stuff. Once we had the retention of records for 75 years, now we want them buried for 30 years. As another Deputy said, we are not technically burying this information for 30 years but we are doing a bit of this, and putting that over there. The people outside this Chamber are hurting and we are giving them no clarity as regards when they will get closure. This was an absolutely disgusting, horrible and despicable thing to do to a human being. Someone who treated an animal in that way would be punished hard today.

I met a man called Frank in Bessborough about three or four years ago. He is deceased now. He spoke to a crowd of survivors there. He thought he was the only fellow sent from Ireland for adoption in Canada. He brought back his little pants and jacket. He did not get closure and he is dead now. Another victim said:

My childhood, there was years of intermittent abuse, but severe in many cases. We were deprived of food if we disobeyed the rules. We were beaten, we were abused sexually, emotionally, physically. I bear some physical scars but for many years I bore the mental and emotional scars of my time. It was there that I learned how to begin to resist.

I have noticed that all of the Government's spokespersons for tonight are male. What is wrong with the women coming in here and listening to the stories? I feel it is tough and I am not a mother, although I am a parent. I have spoken to people who have gone through this. I appeal to the Government to do the right thing. This can be changed and the Government must be able to do something. There must be something within the provisions of this Chamber to change things and let it not go down in history that we have failed in 2020, dealing with matters stretching back as far as 1920, because we have not done the right thing.

I say to the Minister again that this is supposed to be in the public interest. These survivors wanted their stories told so that what happened to them will never happen to somebody else. That is what we are debating here and are supposed to get right. Do not condemn the people who lived in hell in this country to live in hell when they die. Many have, and we should be ashamed to have let them down.

I ask the Minister to withdraw whatever we have to, sit down and let us do it right. Everybody should have a choice and that is what it is about. It is about people having choices. We have silenced many people and families for the past 70 or 80 years and it is shameful, disgusting and decrepit, the most vile thing that can be done to a human being. This was supported by the State and the church. The Minister knows as well as I do that somebody made a profit out of it. I am aware of that from information available to me and the Minister is privy to a lot of what has happened with this investigation.

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